God is not optional.

Civil rights advocates are ringing alarm bells about officials distributing “In God We Trust” posters in Texas schools after a state law took effect requiring public campuses to display any donated items bearing that phrase.

“These posters demonstrate the more casual ways a state can impose religion on the public,” Sophie Ellman-Golan of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) told the Guardian. “Alone, they’re a basic violation of the separation of church and state. But in the broader context, it’s hard not to see them as part of the larger Christian nationalist project.”

Christian nationalist or just plain theocratic. Jews and Muslims also have a God.

While the phrase doesn’t explicitly mention any specific religion, many argue that “In God We Trust” has long been used as a tool to forward Christian nationalism.

No doubt it has, but any monotheistic religion can use it, for the obvious reason that the word “God” with the capital G is monotheistic. Same goes for Allah.

Christians were instrumental in putting the phrase on coins during the civil war, Kristina Lee of Colorado State University wrote last year, and ha[ve] since used the phrase as supposed evidence to prove the United States is a Christian nation.

I love “arguments” like that. Christians do a thing and then say the thing they did is evidence for the truthiness of the thing they did. It’s like trans activists waving “TERFS are evil” signs at protests and then pointing to their signs as evidence that terfs are evil. Round and round we go.

Texas state senator Bryan Hughes, who is Republican and said he is the author of the “In God We Trust Act,” celebrated on Twitter, saying that the motto “asserts our collective trust in a sovereign God”.

But it isn’t collective. It’s imposed, which is a different thing. You imposed this “say ingodwetrust everywhere” law on all of us, so you don’t get to claim we all agree with it.

Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights organization, welcomed the initiative and said this might allow for an opportunity for students to learn about other faiths.

Well they would, wouldn’t they. Monotheists join hands to impose their God on all of us, then later they return to killing each other over which God is the real God.

“The notion of trusting God is common across faiths,” CAIR spokesperson Corey Saylor told the Guardian. “Applied through that lens, the posters can foster discussions among Texas students about their various faiths and enhance understanding.”

And atheists can just be the oppressed minority.